Another field season begins...

The vegetation is slowly greening up!

It was pretty messy out there today...and the critters are back at it!

Hard to believe my site looked like this not too long ago...and all too soon it will look like that again!

 How time flies!

It's spring!

My field site is in full bloom and as such, the field work season is in full swing!

While tracking tree leaf phenology, I found some other gems in the forest:

White oak seedling leafing out. Oak seedlings are generally a rare find at my field site, so it's great to see healthy ones!

Flowers everywhere!

Violet

Found a little blue egg!

In other news - after six years, my hiking shoes are finally being retired. They served me well, but...

...It's time to replace them now that they can eat each other!

That's all for now.

Spring break perks

EMPTY PARKING LOTS = prime parking spots! :) My car is the lord of this parking lot!

Productivity!

Yesterday was quite a day.

It was my turn to give a lecture on a topic of my choice in my Advanced Soils class. I chose allelopathy: an interference mechanism used by plants to affect other plants by releasing chemicals into their surrounding environment. Or if you'd prefer: plant chemical warfare! :) It went well and tomorrow we will be discussing three case studies I chose for the class to read. All this work is helping me with my comprehensive exam, so I am really feeling great about how things are progressing.

After my class presentation, I went straight to the soil lab and continued to run my aggregate stability samples. I am testing the stability of 2mm sized soil aggregates (clumps of individual soil particles held together by organic matter and other materials).

Soil Aggregates (2mm)

By testing the stability of the aggregates we are assessing how vulnerable the soil is to water erosion. If they break apart easily then they are very vulnerable to erosion, but if they are stable then the soil is less vulnerable and has a higher quality. Anyway, I have been working my way through 40 samples of soil with the wonderful help of my lab assistant (each sample takes anywhere between 30-60 min, just for the stability test). After the initial stability test, we then have to rinse the stable aggregates into a tin that we put in the oven over night (or longer) until the sample is oven dry. After it is dry, we then weigh it. This whole process is pretty involved and has taken quite a bit of time...BUT yesterday I FINISHED IT! :) All the samples have now been tested and are drying - so they just need to be weighed. SO EXCITING.

Immediately after I finished the last aggregate stability test, I rushed off to meet a friend at the pool. We swam and talked. It was fabulous. I am loving that I have reincorporated swimming into my schedule! Plus, I get to touch base with my friend while doing it, so it makes it that much better!

After swimming, I came home with a big smile. What a day. Everything felt like it just clicked into place! I even arrived and left at the same time as the stranger I parked next to! How crazy is that. There were two open parking spots and we pulled in at the same time and then, as I was rushing to the pool, he was also walking to his car from the opposite direction...then we got in our cars and left at the same time. Can't say that happens too often...unless you're being stalked I guess...and that wouldn't be good.

Today had a hard time living up to the standards that yesterday set, but I was still fairly productive! Also, the sun came out today. It's warmth felt nice and made for a pleasant walk to and from class.

Coming out of class...

Not the best picture, but Zulauf was glowing in the sunlight. :)

Deer in the headlights!

Who knew! --> Apparently, when I'm placed in front of a video camera and lights, my brain shuts off! :)

Setting up...

Today, a NIU video crew came to the soil lab to interview me about my research experiences at NIU. I thought it would be a breeze, because I've been known to uncontrollably gush about all the valuable professional opportunities, unique research experiences, and exceptional mentoring I've received while attending NIU! What I quickly realized, however (and was trying to prepare for before going into the interview), was that they didn't want uncontrollable gushing, they wanted concise sound bites. When it came time to actually answering their questions however, I was already feeling a little intimidated by the camera and lights and as a result seemed to simply forget everything I had planned to say. I also became slightly overwhelmed by how I was going to fit EVERYTHING I wanted to say into short, stand alone sound bites. Ultimately, this led to a few flustered moments, which then lead to having to redo takes. Even though they assured me it was normal, I definitely felt bad about the retakes I needed! In the end, the video shoot was fun and the camera crew couldn't have been nicer or more patient!

Inevitably, once the interview was over, I kept thinking of all the great things I had wanted to say - go figure! Oh well, I'm sure there is SOMETHING they can use in everything I did end up saying - even if it's not exactly perfect - especially since I am only one of the people they are going to highlight in their 2 min promotional video!  I just did not expect to have such a nervous reaction! :)

Anyway, I'll be sure to share the video when it comes out. That's all for now...

Our winter wonderland...

Today we are supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow. I love when it sticks to the trees.

Winter is progressing...

Tomorrow I get interviewed for a promotional video that NIU is making! That should be fun. 

More later...

Winter Dusting

We went from rainy and 63 degree F to snow and -21 degree F windchill in a couple days! We only got dusted, but it sure is cold out there! Here are a few pictures from the office in the winter:

So serene...

Majestic.

One of my favorite things about my view is this window!

Even the gargoyles look cold.

On a different note, I came into my office the other day to find a stack of wet, unused printer paper and was very confused as to what happened until I saw the water drip. Seems there is a small leak in my ceiling, so now my plants are getting watered automatically! Unfortunately, splash erosion makes things a little messy. :)

Free drip watering system.

Splash erosion in action. Pretty intense, I know! :) Ha!

The leak should be frozen by now, hopefully, so I won't have to worry about it again...until spring, maybe.

We'll see!

Do you want the good news, or the bad?!

Good news: the DI water is back on....well, sort of.....that's where the bad news comes in!

Bad news: the DI water tanks are already empty!

The DI water faucet was accidentally left on over night and it just happened to coincide with when the work crew switched the water back on, so.......there was an accidental flooding event in the soils lab!

Lesson learned.

New Digs

The spring semester is about to begin...ONLY 5 more days!

Today, I attempted to run a few aggregate stability tests, which measure the proportion of soil aggregates that stay clumped together after being agitated in water. Ultimately the tests are used to assess how vulnerable the soil is to water erosion. In the process, I was side-tracked with other items that were on my to do list and by the time I got back around to my research, I found out the deionized water had been shut off! So, I packed everything up and will try again tomorrow. At least I got a few other things done and everything is set up to jump right in once the water is turned back on!

While running around, I took a few shots of my new office to share. It's way up on the 6th floor, so we have a pretty decent view - which is great! I have windows now, so I made sure to bring in some plants! As you can see, it filled up fast with everything I've accumulated throughout my 6 years of graduate school. The neat part is that my previous office mate was also move into this office - so no worries about not getting along!

I even have a little ginko seedling! It is pretty cold in my office right now, so I am hoping it will trigger it to senesce (drop its leaves) and stimulate new growth! Either way, it sure does have a great view of the castle!

There is a small foyer outside of the cluster of offices up there that used to be full of old papers and cabinets. We've since cleaned it out and turned it into a cozy waiting room for students who venture up to our office hours (although no students will be coming to see me for office hours this semester!). We've also made it homey by adding a few plants, so now the view is extra pleasant to sit and chat. It is our escape from stress! :)

Anyway, hopefully the DI water is back on tomorrow! 

Change

It's official! After 4 years in my past office, I've been moved to a new office. The new digs are on the sixth floor. It has a pretty nice view, even if it is separated from where all the main excitement happens down on the second and first floor. Might be nice when it comes time to buckle down and write my dissertation. My adviser has also been moved up to the sixth floor, so we made it feel more like home and I think it will actually turn out to be a great place to spend time and escape from the hustle and bustle.

Also, for the first time since I arrived to NIU - six years ago - I will not be teaching next semester. I have been assigned as the research assistant to the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs. While I will miss teaching, I am excited to explore this new avenue - since it too will provide me with yet another perspective within academia. Change is good.

Soil Descriptions

This week's goals:
1) Finally finish describing all my soil cores taken from my Bennett field site (by Thursday).
2) Complete another day of removing honeysuckle from my Brandt field site (on Friday).

I took 40 cores total, but that includes a duplicate core for each of my 20 plots throughout my field site. So really, I only have 20 cores to describe - I will be using one of the cores for the description and one of the cores for bulk density measurements. I still have about 8 left to describe - so here goes nothing!

So far, one of the most interesting core was this one:

It had a glacial outwash pocket of sand above dense clay at the bottom of the core! 

Honeysuckle removal has been brutal. After all, it has had about 60 years to establish itself, but we are seeing progress - which is rewarding. We are cutting and treating them with herbicide (only on the cut stumps), with the hope that it will not re-sprout as strong. The fall fire will help our efforts as well.

Outstanding Student...

I was honored to receive two awards recently: Outstanding Graduate Student Award and Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. 

I am now in the second year of my Ph.D. program. My project has come a long way and is now fairly succinct with three separate parts that will combine to answer one main question. 

Fieldwork has begun earlier this year with the warmer-than-usual March. My biggest problem right now is protecting my field equipment from rodents. In the past, we haven't had to deal with this on the scale that we do now. So far rodents have done about $1200 worth of damage via chewing and severing wires. I am constructing armor for the equipment, so I hope that solves the problem and that I can get more complete data sets as a result! So, hopefully fieldwork goes smoothly this summer. 

I am looking forward to hearing back about the Dissertation Improvement NSF Grant I submitted. I am obviously hoping to get it, but if not, the feedback will be nice.  The feedback will hopefully benefit my project and help improve my grant proposal, so I can resubmit it in October.

I have also taken on a new commitment for the next three years - hopefully they will keep me on for the entire program! NIU has recently received an NSF grant to fund a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). This year we have five interdisciplinary projects and 7 NSF REU participants and 12 total participants. I am the Graduate Student REU Coordinator and so far it has been fun coordinating all the logistics. I am looking forward to meeting the participants come June 17th. 

More adventures to come, I'm sure.

PhD here I come...Fall 2010

The second semester after my graduation has begun. I've officially applied to the new PhD program at NIU within the Geography department! Hopefully I will be working, in part, with the Nature Conservancy here in IL on Oak Savannah restoration and research.

I'm continuing to teach here at NIU until I begin the program (hopefully Fall 2010). This semester I teach 3 courses: Geog 101 - Survey of Physical Geography, Geog 256/556 online - Intro to maps and mapping, and Geog 359/557 - Intro to GIS. This week will be our second week meeting. I'm excited, because this is the first semester I feel prepared enough in advance that I can breathe between lectures and assignments. I've always been able to keep up, but I've found that it truly does take a few years of experience, gathering info/examples and redesigning lectures based on how they preformed to really find your niche.

I'm excited to teach an online course this semester since it has allows me to explore new teaching strategies and will provide me overall experience in a variety of teaching realms. I've also been able to learn about and incorporate fun technology into that and other courses. For example, my newest find has been Wimba (Pronto & Classroom) which integrates very well with the student course site: Blackboard. For now, I am experimenting and familiarizing myself with the program by using it primarily for my Online office and providing them with an Online student lounge/study room. I will hopefully be able to branch out and use it more extensively in the future as I become more familiar and comfortable with it.

Prepping my first online course has gone smoothly so far, because I was lucky enough to receive amazing tips from another Faculty member who has lots of online teaching experience (Thanks, Tonya!). I feel much more comfortable about the structure of the class and eager to see how the technology will hopefully improve their overall experience with online learning. I've also tried to integrate a bit of it into my face to face classes, so hopefully its a great experiences all around.

We'll see how it goes.

Master of Science

It's official, my thesis was accepted! I've graduated. Next step, instructor until who knows...??!!

Brain fart...

I don't know why, but its getting harder and harder to just sit down and write my thesis. I suppose its because there are a million other things going on that seem a tad more on the fun side, so they catch my attention and before you know it its 4pm and the thesis remains untouched.

I try to work on it everyday, for at least some length of time...whether I'm reading articles, writing a few sentences, proof-reading...etc. But it just never seems closer to being complete! I just need to force myself to be one of those people who just put everything on paper and then go back and proof-read! I get caught up in making every sentence just right when I should just be writing.

The deadlines are fast approaching and I am already way off the schedule I made for myself. Even though there is less and less time, my panic level has stayed constant...Somehow I am confident it will get done...I guess that's a good sign at least...or maybe its a bad sign I am not panicking! Who knows!

I should get back to "work" I suppose!

I've been blogged

Its official...there is a blog entry about me on our department blog.

Click here to check it out!

Still in school... Winter break is slowly disappearing much like the abundant amounts of snow that used to cover the ground. Soon my last semester will begin and I will go back to juggling 2 classes and writing my thesis. I am excited to try out the new activities I've chosen to incorporate into my course design.

I've been reading Aspiring Academics and would recommend it to anyone thinking about pursuing a career in academia. It has a lot of great information.

6th week already...

I am currently in my 6th week as a second year graduate student. I have since moved to a new office space (room 213) with just one other graduate student instead of 10. I like it, but it really leaves you out of the loop with all the first years who are housed in our former office space: room 208. Most of the second years have filtered into new offices as well. Two of my former office mates are located next to me and it is nice to still be able to talk. I am taking 3 courses in addition to a required half credit seminar that is not applied to our graduation. They are: Geography Field Methods, Environmental Management, and Advanced Spatial Analysis. I am once again the lab coordinator for the Intro to Physical Geography labs and also teach two sections. I was also assigned as the teaching assistant for the Forest Ecology lab as well as a research assistant for 4 hours a week. I have continued my duties as the Graduate Colloquium Coordinator this semester as well as taken on a new position as the graduate representative on the Student Advisory Committee.

My thesis research has been moving along well. Since my last post the problems with the new growth chamber have been fixed and I am currently on trial 2 of 3. I completed the first trial in which the samaras were subjected to 7 degrees Celsius. They are now germinating (if they are viable and able) at a temperature of 1 degree Celsius. I have completed my first year thesis field work as well. I went to the U.P. this August with my advisor and an undergraduate (Christine) in order to obtain all the first year density counts and heights on the seedlings that germinated within my plots. After the U.P. trip we proceeded up to Canada for two weeks, where I assisted my professors with their research and children. This is my third year working with them up in Canada, but my first year in which I didn’t have any of my own research up there. Later, Josh and Christine visited my local central Illinois site in order to get the density counts and height for those plots. Now it’s just a waiting game for the field work related to my thesis until next summer.

I am overwhelmed and extremely busy most days…but it all seems to work out somehow! I just take it one day at a time…

Ongoing Crisis in Room 215…

To date, I’ve had to swap my experiment to and from the new growth chamber three times since the first freezing incident. Finally, after trying everything the company who sold the department the machine instructed us to do, there is someone here to do a check up on the chamber. Turns out the chamber wasn’t acting up simply because of the nature of my experiment…which is a good thing! Apparently, the refrigeration unit was not functioning properly, so the guy is looking for a leak and is going to fix it (today hopefully)…YEA! Currently, my experiment is being housed in the old growth chamber that may stop working at any minute, since it is actually quite old and temperamental (hence the need to purchase the new growth chamber!). So far however, the good ol’ temperamental growth chamber has been holding a constant temperature and is acting as a great surrogate for my samaras. After today, I am hoping I’ll never have to worry about checking for ice build up in the chamber! We'll see! If everything works properly from here on out, then things aren’t so bad! I am glad this mishap occurred at the beginning of the experiment, because otherwise the consequences may have been more detrimental.

Crisis in room 215!

In conducting field work, I have learned that everything you plan will probably have to be altered in some way in order to account for the unknowns that occur in the field! Lab work apparently is not void of these alterations and mishaps, as this is yet another example of research not going as planned!

Apparently, all the moisture from my first germination trial run is “too taxing” on the new growth chamber I am using. On Monday (yesterday), I came in to check whether the contraptions that we constructed in order to keep the samaras moist had actually worked over the weekend. The temperature on the growth chamber was at 5.9°C, when it was supposed to be at the set temperature of 5°C. I thought perhaps it was simply within the fluctuation range of the machine, but when I came in today (Tuesday) to check on it the temperature was all the way up to 6.9°C, which seemed unacceptable since what I wanted it to be set for was 5°C. We called the company and that’s what they told us, I have too much moisture in the chamber for the current cycle of the fans. Therefore, I had to remove my experiments in order for all the ice to melt from the fans and then reset the fans to cycle between cool and defrost faster so that it can keep up better. It put a slight kink in my experiment, but I was able to temporarily move my experiments to the older growth chamber until tomorrow when we can readjust the new one. We also thought it best if we reassign this trial to be the 7°C trial instead of the 5°C trial, because the temperature seemed to range closer to 7°C than it did 5°C. Oh the woes of research…and I thought lab work would run much smoother than field work!

On the plus side however, the contraptions that were designed to keep the germination paper moist for longer so as to reduce the frequency needed for watering the samaras seemed to work like a charm. I finished assembling all the experiments on Friday and when I checked on Monday they were still very moist! At least that seems successful thus far!

Field work season begins!

I headed out into the field today with my advisor. We visited my central Illinois site where this past fall I had collected and then redistributed samaras into my plots. Some plots contained samaras from the northern range, some contained samaras from the southern range, while still others contained samaras from the central area (their original origin). Each square meter plot received 1,000 samaras, except the five plots designated for Tennessee seeds. Those received 500 samaras as they were assumed to have a higher viability rate because they were sorted by the company we purchased them from.

The test runs I have been conducting for about 2 ½ - 3 months now, in which I distributed 100 samaras from each location into small plots with soil, show that all locations have some germination action. This confirms that all locations had viable seeds and after I count the germinated seeds I will know better what that viability rate is for each location. Either way since the samaras were sprouting in the test run, I was hopeful that they would also be germinating in the field.

The first plot we can upon at the site falsely got our hopes up that all the distributed samaras were flourishing. It was covered with a blanket of seedlings much like what one would expect from a mast year and much like the area that surrounded it. As we walked around to all the other plots however, there were definitely smaller numbers of seedlings when compared to that initial plot. Some plots didn’t even have any seedlings in them and we speculated that it was because they were located in low lying areas that may have become to wet. We took a density count for all the plots and determined that it would be the maximum density count for each location that we would be interested in rather than the averages, since we are ultimately interested in seeming how well these plants could establish in these different geographic areas. We intend to return to this site and also go to the northern site in August to get the official density counts and other measurements for my first growing season. Everything is moving forward though…exciting progress!

The down side to all of this is that it seems one of the main competitors for the forest floor space is garlic mustard at the central site, which may represent somewhat of a problem. We’ll see, I guess. Also it will be interesting to see how the cicadas affect things as this is going to be the year they emerge in masses! As many as seven billion in some predictions may emerge to mate as it has been another 17 years in their 17 year cycle. I believe they only feed on and lay their eggs in mature trees, but I am not positive.

I took a few pictures of this latest field adventure as well as of the preparation and set up of my official first temperature trial run for my thesis. If you are interested you can view these pictures and more by clicking on the Research pictures link under related links, then click on the Goal: M.S. set.